As technology shrinks the necessary equipment, the military is looking at business jets for aerial reconnaissance missions

The business jets most known for whisking the global elite to meetings, Davos and the Super Bowl may soon have another purpose: finding bad guys.

The U.S. Air Force plans to buy 17 of the planes to replace the fleet of 50-year-old aircraft it currently relies on to track enemy ground forces from above, pitting three popular and very different business jets against one another in a competition for a contract that could be worth as much as $6 billion.